Bismarck and the Origins of World War I.
Otto von Bismarck The recent excellent histories on the factors leading up to World War One don’t go back far enough in time. The main contention of this essay is that the road to World War One begins with the long-run consequences of the policies and strategies of Otto von Bismarck and the way he created the First German Reich in 1871. The heart of the Treaty of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) was the “Holy Alliance,” an agreement of the monarchs of Russia, Prussia (later Germany) and Austria (later Austria-Hungary) to stamp out any return to the revolutionary ideals of the French Revolution. The three monarchies cooperated until the Crimean War. The Crimean War (1853-56) was triggered by Russian attempts to expand its influence around the Black Sea, force the Ottoman Empire to allow Russian warships through the Dardanelles and increase influence in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire retreated. To keep Russia bottled u...